This volume describes and analyses the highly successful career of the Dutch
physicist and Nobel prize winner P.J.W. Debye (1884- 1966) in the Third Reich.
The book sketches the life of a man who lived for science, but at the same time
maintained close contacts with influential officials, industrialists and
sometimes even politicians. In this context Debye declined to respond in public
to the treatment of Jews in society in general and in science in particular,
even after his migration to the United States in 1940. By combining a
biographical perspective with network analysis and research on contemporary
moral assessments, this book sheds new and disturbing light on Debye_s socio-
political worldview and his involvement in the Aryanization of German science.
